Might be the Ogres from Berserk - I always appreciate a novel take on a very simple conceit like "large fantasy brute monster", especially ones that accomplish something interesting through only a minor tweak. Giving them these large swaying phallic column heads that also evoke a sperm whale made them extremely memorable and I love the shots of the lower jaw with the rows of teeth unfurling.

I was an enormous fan of all the Hiss designs - I deeply respected their commitment to a "restrained" design philosophy that allowed stuff like the heavily distorted designs to stand out as sharply as they did. I think my favourite detail on any given Hiss enemy was the lividity of their skin... the full body bruising they received from every blood vessel bursting under the pressure of the resonance within.

So far it's okay! I've been a little swamped under huge amts of work I can't share and also kind of deeply stressed out by loads of other unrelated life stuff but today specifically I slept in and am now quietly playing YGO before work with a monster energy so like... that's pretty nice, yeah

As a design choice I think a Gun-dick is more compelling because it implies a gun that functions as someone's actual dick... I think there's enormous visual and narrative potential there beyond the obvious initial humour or shock value... but both would depend entirely on execution. I'd paint either and I'm always gonna perk my ears up when something plays in that space. We need more freewheeling wilfully obscene or genuinely weird design.

Oh my godddd uhhh I mean right now when i'm painting The King of Yamimakai in my off-time (You heard it here first folks!) the answer is kind of set in stone. He HAS a single reference card in "Contract with the Yamimakai" and I always assumed that despite not being enormously powerful himself he's like the head of some minor netherworld faction/fiefdom.... I think an archetype predicated on court politics within "The Kingdom of Yamimakai" would be cool.... A whole array of "Second/Third/Fourth" Princes of Yamimakai etc., "Vizier of Yamimakai", "Palace Guard of Yamimakai" etc. It's close to Dark World thematically but more about internal conflict over the throne.... mechanisms that involve like summoning two competing Princes of Yamimakai who come with built-in effects that Ritual Summon one of several possible Kings depending on which one dies first (Either to tribute, ritual cards that simulate being assassinated or crowned etc.). The idea would be that the deck can build to a handful of different possible boss endboards based on what you want it to respond to.... one Prince becomes a King that has fantastic battle phase interaction for countering a battle phase heavy deck like a Tenpai, one Prince has counter trap stuff or can out floodgates, one Prince enables mass summoning of synchro or xyz fodder because he has the loyalty of his men etc. I like the idea of a deck that's mostly "responsive" to other decks in a given format but only if it can make concrete choices and resolve the inner "power struggle". Play would be about preserving the combo route to the specific KIng you want... or learning how to make do with the one you could make it to, and the whole thing is full of unsettling classically Takahashi-esque sofubi/post Mcfarlane monster morphology.

I'm like constantly frustrated by the level of media literacy across the board in a lot of spheres but I try to just focus on my own practice. Bringing up KSBD - if someone doesn't know where the term "Chakravartin" comes from or why "Technique of Relief" is named that it certainly diminishes what they could be getting from the experience for sure - but if I get the chance to talk to someone about it while i'm going to do my best to try and help folks make those connections and foster that impulse, i'm not going to chastise anyone or despair at the state of things. What matters to me is whether I am exercising that impulse, whether I can really say i'm researching and learning and acquiring a more profound understanding consistently. As long as I can say that of myself and hold myself to that standard, it doesn't matter what others are or are not doing. But yes, I get it lol.

At the longtime recommendation of a friend i'm reading Shimeji Simulation, which is a little outside my usual wheelhouse, but in ongoing i'm currently on Chainsaw Man, Tower Dungeon, Jojolands, Dandadan, Haraiso, Dai Dark, Baki Rahen and HxH. This year alone I read all of Getter Robo, Baki, Mazinger.... i'm trying to read more old Super Robo work.

Fusion in both instances, but honestly I deeply adore every summon method except for Link.... Synchro, Fusion, Ritual and XyZ cards are all like painfully pretty - the specific shade of Ritual blue is for me maybe the most perfect blue anywhere short of Klein, but Link... i'm sorry, but the frame/design of Link cards is deeply ugly to me. I hate the mock cyber hexagon greeble, I hate the enormous arrows and I hate that they omit the level stars, objectively the prettiest possible "at a glance "card power eval metric.

The universal advice is, yes, practice, and the best kind of practice is just continually drawing/painting/whatever, trying to do it every day as much as possible, whether that means pushing your boundaries or resting in your comfort zone. Drawing every day, even if you don't finish something every day, is hugely important. Drawing stuff you're not familiar with, studies or forays into the unknown are also important, hugely important - but I feel like what you're talking about has less to do with technical skill and more with trying to chase your idols, something I also struggled with deeply and still do. It's very easy to feel like i'm just a composite of those same artists - I certainly don't feel like i've pulled it off - I don't think anyone does.

Keeping in mind that it's almost impossible to understand your own work the way anyone else does - I want to tell you that I was also someone who only started drawing seriously at 19/20 back when I left school in 2013. I had spent years fucking around kind of coasting on a rep I had for being "The kid good at drawing" without really having anything but one or two things I could actually draw. When I decided I wanted to follow this as a career I spent my "gap year" doing nothing but relearning how to draw in pen, completely different from everything I had previously done. Everything has followed from that moment, and here I am about a decade later - it is NEVER too late, and you can move much faster than I did too if you commit to really learning - I still fuck around a lot lol.

My best recommendation for how to feel like you can design the way that figures like Nira/Amemiya/Shinohara etc. can is to understand that you cannot only draw from their work - you cannot only draw from a diet of other artists in your own field. They're an important part of your study, but they and all the "Greats" consume everything - watch experimental operas, read books about lobsters or obscure textile weaving, go to exhibits on german medieval typography, take a walk through a part of a city you've never been to before and take photos. You cannot possibly know where inspiration will come from, and the more you take in from "outside our ecosystem" the more sustenance you give yourself. I've had sudden ideas for exactly how a particular design should look leap out at me looking at footage of remote Siberian town supermarkets and listening to recordings from early phonographs and watching total trash horror films and everywhere in between. The more you only consume the greats, the more you will only be capable of imitating them, replicating not just the strengths you see (Which are less unique in anyone else's hands) but also the flaws and weaknesses they have we can't understand. They're a catalyst you use to start a reaction that needs material from elsewhere to keep burning.

Above all, never lose hope and enjoy the process. You will outpace all of us if you have your heart in it.

I only play modern and only really through the medium of Master Duel, but given the right community i'm sure I could get into Goat or Edison. I'm not one to become overly attached to any specific era though - I love YGO first and foremost for the art and the atmosphere, and then the rapid-fire "combo exchange" reinforces that, and it's most evident in the current TCG meta. I like YGO at it's broadest span, where any card that's still legal from a pool of 1000s can hypothetically find weird new life in an unorthodox strategy, and that's most possible now, at least outside of bleeding edge competition.

I DID just say I don't have absolute favourites on almost anything, and i'm sticking by that - but again, I will also offer an all-time hitter for me that I would consider among the very best, and that's Curse of Dragon. The specific kind of freewheeling post-Gigerisms that Takahashi leaned into are best exemplified in designs like Curse, with it's bizarre body format, almost like a kind of biological aircraft more than a living thing - and a name that immediately invites speculation. Is it a Curse inflicted on a dragon that altered it into this form? Is it itself a being hostile to all draconic life, a "curse" that visits itself upon them? It's wonderful.

Thank u!!! I want to be Justice irl I love that design so much.

So I don't know shit about coding (I should probably learn) and I get by just fine as an artist, but that's contingent on my ability to work with and understand other team members who do the actual intense, complex, endless work of coding and building the title. The best thing you can do if you don't want to learn to program (But do as I say, not as I do - literally every game industry position benefits from that knowledge, I am a lucky outlier) is to foster relationships with people who do enjoy programming, be willing to collaborate together, maybe do art assets or writing or anything for a small project the two of you put out. It's like any other discipline - honing your collaborative skills will allow you to make something greater than the sum of your respective parts, and having work to your name is a great way to get attention from larger bodies like publishers or producers looking for folks to run pitch decks etc. The way I see it - breaking into the industry is honestly impossible without a "spark" of luck, but you can build a giant pile of wood over the years so that when that spark lands, it can start one hell of a bonfire.

Insanely difficult and wide ranging question. I don't really like having absolute favourites, but if you're asking me for a Really Good One, the twin Tekkaman designs from the infamous Tekkaman Twin Blood short are like... truly holy to me, although that has more to do with how they're portrayed in motion than the designs in isolation. That's just one for you, I have 10000s that live in my brain in a endless line of canonized saints.

God i'm not sure right now... I haven't played through Dawntrail yet so i'm looking forwards to that, but in terms of things I was waiting on a release for in the near future, Slitterhead was my biggest one and it's been phenomenal, but I don't have an immediate successor. I'm fascinated by "American Showa Story" and I highly recommend backing "Mama's Sleeping Angels" but aside from those two off the top of my head there's not an instant candidate. Death Stranding 2, whatever From does next, a hypothetical SMTVI etc. are all such distant prospects i'm just letting them percolate in space for now. Watch me remember like 50 things as soon as I hit send on this.

It's a mixture. Certainly almost all the longest and highest-profile projects i've been on (SZX being the foremost example) were instances where I was contacted first, usually because a specific team member was familiar with my work and thought I would make a good fit for the precise thing they were trying to do. In the case of SZX, I did TGS banner art (later the cover for the rerelease) for Devil Engine, and when Tristan/Sinoc, the lead dev on that, was putting together the team for the SZX pitch he told the producer "she can do biopunk monster freaks". I think a lot of that is definitely bc of my social media presence, being easily researched and active in the community, having a quickly linked portfolio etc, but more than "size" of presence it's "quality". Building friendships and mutual collaborative efforts with others in your field is so important, not just for your career but your life, your mental health, your ability to keep learning and enjoying the work you do.

I applied to maybe 100 different concept art positions over the year leading up to Tristan DMing me on twitter and saying "Hey do you want to work on a pitch" and I never even got rejections from most of them.